Conventional aircraft with retractable landing gear typically include landing gear controls on the cockpit control panel that include a lever for manual control of the raising and lowering of the landing gear. Landing gear controls also typically include a locking device to prevent inadvertent raising of the control lever (which would raise the landing gear) as long as the lowered landing gear bears the weight of the aircraft. To control actuation of the locking device, conventional aircraft landing gear controls use linear solenoids that tend to be bulky and require a relatively large spatial envelope in the control area. These linear solenoids also use a large amount of power, which creates a considerable amount of heat that is hard to dissipate in the closed environment of an aircraft cockpit. Accordingly, there is a need for a reliable, low-power landing gear control system for use in an aircraft while remaining in a compact spatial envelope.